


christmas lights

by thepsychicclam



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Christmas in July apparently, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 04:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepsychicclam/pseuds/thepsychicclam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Stilinski’s put their Christmas lights up that same way every year like Stiles' mom wanted because she loved Christmas. It’s a sad day and they always put them up in silence, and this year Derek shows up to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	christmas lights

**Author's Note:**

> For [foreverblue-navy](http://foreverblue-navy.tumblr.com/), who I adore and deserves all of the things. Her prompt was for her Christmas Stilinski headcanon, which I tried to follow as closely as possible. 
> 
> Written for the [Sterek week askbox prompt thingy](http://kedreeva.tumblr.com/post/54551591390/masterlist-post-for-askbox-prompt-takers). My [askbox](http://thepsychicclam.tumblr.com/ask) is still open for prompts <3
> 
> An absolutely gorgeous piece of art by [foreverblue-navy](http://foreverblue-navy.tumblr.com/).  
> 

Stiles carries the worn box down from the attic. His dad already has the tree in the stand, a short plump thing from the supermarket. They stopped caring what kind of tree they got after she died because that was always her job. She always had a gift for finding the perfect tree. They’d tried that first Christmas, but his dad had let Stiles pick the tree and it’d been too tall and too fat to fit inside the house. They had to chop it up, cut off the top and some of the branches to get it into the living room.

Stiles has never forgotten that Christmas tree. It was perfect because it was ugly, deformed, twisted. It reflected the way it was for them, without his mother. It wasn’t right, it was uneven, it had holes. 

They both had holes, big holes that Christmas trees and burnt gingerbread baked from the handwritten recipe found in a drawer couldn’t fill.

Years later, they still patch up the holes with tinsel and lights, with the homemade decorations Stiles made with his mother when he was five. Two wreathes made out of green and red beads, the color fading after fifteen years. Stiles barely remembers making them, has a snatch of memory, a flash of a scene, a song in the background, his mother’s face, the beads laid out on the table. 

He doesn’t even know if it’s real. He might have made it up. But it’s all he has.

There are other ornaments, his mother’s perfectly painted manger scene with details on the sheep and the baby Jesus, his dad’s reindeer that’s mostly in the lines, and Stiles’ ornament with designs that now look like a messy blob. _It’s beautiful, honey,_ his mother had told him, had even known that the blob of yellow and black was supposed to be the Batman symbol. 

That he remembers. That he knows was real.

Stiles places the box on the floor in the living room, doesn’t miss that his dad has already broken out the bottle of Jack Daniels, has a tumbler full sitting on the mantle beside Santa and a stocking hanger. Stiles trails his fingers over the faded writing on the box lid, “Christmas Lights” written in his mother’s neat, curly handwriting. Just seeing it makes him think of notes hidden in his lunchbox, birthday cards, and the letter she’d written for his eighteenth birthday. He blinks back the tears and opens up the box.

His mother was the one who liked Christmas. Starting the week of Thanksgiving, she’d start cooking, more than three people could ever eat. Casseroles and pies and cakes, and on Thanksgiving day, he’d watch the Macy’s Parade with her while they shared pumpkin muffins and hot chocolate. Then that night, she’d start listening to Christmas carols, singing all her favorites as she put away leftovers and started decorating.

Stiles asked her once why she loved Christmas so much. She had picked him up and twirled him around the Christmas tree.

“Because it’s _magic_ ,” she had said. “How else could Santa make reindeer fly just to bring you presents?” She’d held him in her arms, even though he was probably too big to be held, and nuzzled the side of his face and kissed his cheek before he laid his head on her shoulder. Stiles remembers the multi-colored lights reflecting off her face, her eyes bright with excitement and wonder like she was a child instead of an adult. 

Stiles believed it was magic back then too, had believed it so much that he’d written Santa Claus a letter telling him that he wouldn’t ask for another toy ever again if he just used his Christmas magic to bring his mom back. The only thing he wanted for Christmas was his mom standing in front of the Christmas tree, telling his dad where to put the lights, wrapping presents, making cookies.

Christmas morning, Stiles ran into the living room believing that his mother would be there beside the tree. All that was there was a new bike, a video game system, and a few presents. And his dad, smiling through the tears, with two cups of hot chocolate and pumpkin muffins. Stiles ran back to his room, threw himself on the bed, and cried for hours. His dad spent part of the day with him, crying with him, but then left him so he could cry alone. He didn’t get out of bed that entire day.

There was no Christmas magic. There was no Santa to grant his wish. His mother was never coming back to him.

Stiles used to love Christmas like his mother. Before. Before the sound of carols and the sight of twinkling lights opened up the holes inside of him, making him ache for what he lost. Now Christmas was a solemn affair at the Stilinski house, with heavy silences and the smell of gingerbread mixing with whiskey.

*

The doorbell rings after they put the lights on the tree, just like his mother always liked. They played the Beach Boys Christmas album – on vinyl – followed by Bing Crosby, just like his mother always did. They didn’t sing along to the songs, no renditions of _Little Saint Nick_ or _White Christmas_ as they hung the lights on the limbs, no Christmas cheer because it was lying miles away in a frost-covered grave.

Stiles leaves his father by the mantle, draining the rest of that tumbler before refilling it. Derek’s on the porch, holding a drink carrier with three coffees. Holiday flavors, peppermint, eggnog, and pumpkin spice. Stiles takes the pumpkin spice and carries the eggnog over to his father. He thanks Derek but leaves it untouched on the mantle beside the half-filled glass.

“Can I help?” Derek asks. Stiles glances at his father. He’s staring at the ornament he holds in his hands, the one they bought for their first wedding anniversary. Stiles nods and leads Derek outside. He tells Derek to get the ladder as he goes back into the attic and finds another box with his mother’s script across the top. 

He carries it downstairs, and glances at his father, who has hung the ornament and is now staring at it while nursing his whiskey, before joining Derek outside. Stiles opens the box and pulls out strands of lights to hang across the front of the house. He hands Derek one, and he ascends the ladder.

“What do you usually do for Christmas?” Stiles asks and then takes a sip of coffee. He stuffs his cold hand into his coat pocket. “We’ve known each other all these years, and I’ve never asked.”

Derek stretches his arms above him as he places the lights along the edge of the roof, his jacket riding up, his scarf bunching around his neck. “I haven’t celebrated Christmas since Laura died.”

“Oh.” Stiles thinks about skipping Christmas completely, about going six years without pulling out the boxes with his mother’s handwriting, without remembering the way her fruit cake tasted like heaven on his tongue and how he never understood why people hated fruitcake until he ate someone else’s. Six years without being visited by her ghost from Christmases past. 

“What did you do before then?”

Derek glances back over his shoulder, and Stiles sees the pain and sadness there, a feeling he’s familiar with, knows is in his own eyes. “We had a bonfire every Christmas Eve,” Derek says as he turns back to the lights. “With marshmallows and Christmas cake and cider. My grandparents would come, all the aunts and uncles, and there’d be multiple Packs together tied somehow through bloodlines and marriage. Once, Christmas Eve fell on the full moon.” Stiles watches as Derek pauses, his hands in front of him and his head bowed. Stiles wishes he was close enough to touch him, to kiss him. “That was my favorite Christmas ever.”

Stiles imagines Derek running through the forest with his family, the frost crunching beneath their feet, the Pack howling under a Christmas moon. He wishes Derek could have that again, that he could share it with him.

While Stiles pops back inside to check on his father, who’s now in his recliner watching football, Derek grabs more lights from box. Stiles finds him on the ladder, placing a strand around the window.

“No!” Stiles yells, running up to the ladder and pointing. He’s shaking his head, a bubble forming in his chest. “That’s not right!” Derek looks down at him, concerned expression on his face. “The red ones don’t go on the window, only the blue ones. It always had to be the blue ones!” Stiles yells in a panic. Derek quickly descends the ladder and wraps Stiles in a tight embrace. “She always loved the blue ones,” Stiles mumbles against Derek’s shoulder.

Derek doesn’t try to comfort him, just holds him and kisses his hair as Stiles tries to calm his trembling hands. “It has to be the way she liked them,” he says quietly, feeling small, silly. He wants Derek to understand, knows it is weird. “It’s our tradition,” Stiles explains against Derek’s neck. His eyes are closed, the familiar scent of Derek and Derek’s peppermint coffee washing over him every time he inhales. “And it’s the one thing that can’t change. The one thing we shouldn’t have to lose.”

Derek holds him for awhile, his hands rubbing comforting circles along Stiles’ back, his body protecting him from the cold. He wonders if it’ll ever stop hurting, if after over a decade and it still hurt this bad if it would continue forever. He tries not to think of how his father feels, alone in the recliner with his whiskey. It’s why Stiles doesn’t say anything, doesn’t hide the bottle for a month.

Derek seems to sense Stiles’ increasingly melancholy mood because he kisses across his hairline, along his temple, and on his nose. Then he covers Stiles’ lips with his own, a soft, tender kiss, full of unspoken understanding and love.

When Stiles finally pulls away, he tells Derek how to hang the remaining lights, and after he’s finished there’s still too much light outside to look at them, so Derek tells Stiles to sit on the stoop and wait for him. Stiles picks at the hem of his jeans, thinks about the way his father used to argue with his mother while they put up the lights because they could never agree on the way to do things. He chuckles softly at the memory, at how flustered his father got up on the ladder, at how his mother always made Stiles hold the ladder because it made her feel better about him being up there.

Derek returns a little bit later with two mugs. Stiles takes it curiously as Derek sits closely beside him, their bodies huddled close together. Derek hooks his foot around Stiles’ ankle as Stiles sniffs and his eyes drift shut. The aroma is thick and chocolatey, with a hint of something else underneath.

“My grandmother’s recipe,” Derek explains as he watches Stiles take a sip. It’s like an explosion of sweetness and _home_ on his tongue. He smiles over at Derek, and the look on Derek’s face makes Stiles fall that much more in love with him. Derek looks like Stiles just gave him the moon with a simple smile. “It’s a Hale family secret,” Derek says with mock seriousness. There’s a smile at the corner of his lips, something small and private and _real_ and just for Stiles. “Passed down through generations, or so the legend goes. My grandmother always said werewolves were better cooks than humans.”

“If this is any indication, then she was probably right.” Stiles takes another long sip, humming contently.

“I’ll teach you how to make it,” Derek says, looking over at Stiles nervously. Stiles reaches over and threads their fingers.

“I’ll teach you how to make my mother’s fruitcake. It’s about time we have it in the house again.” 

Derek smiles and looks away as he takes a drink.

After they finish their cocoa, they go inside and coax his dad from the recliner. Derek helps them finish decorating the tree, and makes another batch of cocoa that even the sheriff drinks. Derek makes a joke about the amount of ornaments on the tree, and Stiles punches him before Derek pulls him into his arms. 

Stiles and his dad share a look and Stiles runs upstairs to grab something from his room. When he returns to the living room, he’s holding his hands behind his back, suddenly embarrassed. Derek watches him, eyebrows raised as he tries to figure it out.

“We, um, have something for you. If you think it’s lame or stupid or too soon or whatever, then that’s totally cool, I won’t be offended, I mean, we’ve only been dating like nine months, but I thought since it was Christmas and – “

“Stiles,” Derek cuts in, fond smile on his face.

Stiles pulls his hands from around his back, shows him the stocking they had made for him at the mall. Derek looks at it for a long time, completely still, and Stiles thinks he may have made a mistake after all. But when Derek finally brings his eyes up to look at Stiles, Stiles’ breath catches at the emotion in them. 

“Thank you,” Derek manages, his voice low. He pulls Stiles into a kiss, then hugs the sheriff. Stiles hands Derek the stocking so he can hang it from the mantle while Stiles rifles through one of the many boxes of Christmas decorations strewn across the living room. He finds the stockings at the bottom, hands his dad his, and then clutches his own in one hand, his mother’s in the other.

Stiles remembers how he always used to buy his parents at least one present to fit into their stockings because he never thought it was fair that Santa left him goodies in his but his parents got nothing. And he remembers how Stiles opening his stocking had been his mother’s favorite part, how her face lit up as he pulled out socks and candy and oranges and small games and trinkets. He remembers how she would put things in his stocking every day leading up to Christmas, like her own version of an Advent calendar. Remembers when rats got into the boxes one year and chewed a hole in the heel of Stiles’ stocking, and his mom darned it with an old sock. He fingers the threadbare patch affectionately.

Stiles places his stocking beside Derek’s, hangs his mom’s in between him and his dad. They step back and admire the four red stockings that now lined the fireplace. Derek puts his arm around Stiles’ waist, kisses the side of his head and whispers, “Thank you.”

“Wanna get started on that fruitcake?” Derek asks a little while later, and Stiles nods.

“The sun’s down, let’s go look at the lights before you two get distracted in the kitchen,” his dad says, and Stiles smiles and follows him outside. They walk all the way to the street without stealing a glance before turning around. The multi-colored lights shine bright in the dark night, around the windows, the edge of the roof, in the bushes and on the porch, exactly how Stiles remembers from his childhood. He can remember his mother out in this exact spot, _oohing_ and _aahing_ as they surveyed their work. 

Stiles steals a glance at his father, notices the smile on his lips. He knows this is why they do this every year. This is how they keep her near, for a few days out of each year she’s in their house, her fingerprints more prominent like they were before. It heals as much as it hurts.

Stiles places a hand on his dad’s shoulder and reaches beside him to thread his fingers with Derek’s.

-fin


End file.
